A newsletter to learn about practical ways to decolonize your research and data work-lives with byte-sized drabbles about the daily life of a data professional.

Behind-the-Scenes: Deving New Indie Game

I started making video games in 2023 because of a data science fellowship. I could do any project and I decided to make a branching narrative game in Twine. Ever since, I use video games as a way to express things happening in my life and explore the complexities of human behaviors.

This year I’m making a solo-dev game where players explore a sewer and it’s deep dark horrors as Rat Boy, an embodiment of feeling burnt out and dissatisfaction with the world he lives in. I’m making all the art this time; I’m using this is as opportunity to play and learn new skills in tools like Krita, OpenToonz, and Blender. It’s so refreshing to program, project plan, etc. while making art.

Curated Content: Bite-sized Taxonomy Boot Camps in 2025

If you’re a taxonomist or knowledge manager, you’ll learn about techniques, tips, and tools for your work with two online boot camps on June 18, 2025 and October 8, 2025. The June boot camp is three sessions on working with SME (subject matter experts), facets and SharePoint, and some use cases.

It’s on UK time and you can buy both boot camp days or just one. For comparison buying just the June 18th boot camp is £95.00/$122.

Curated Content: Yale University’s Recommendations for Describing Gender Identity

If you’re developing technical standards or policies at your institution you often want examples as reference. Yale’s Reparative Archival Description Working Group recently came out with recommendations for acquisitions and accessioning, addressing incorrect description, contacting creators/subjects, and ArchivesSpace Agents Gender Field. I found the last section about ArchivesSpace especially interesting because the platform is so widely used and supported by the US archival sector.

Industry Insights: Professional Shift to Focus on Climate Change

I’ve noticed in last two years more of the different types of cultural heritage organizations have shifted focus to combating climate change.

In the cultural heritage sector the discussion still surrounds disaster planning: what happens if there is a flood, fire, tornado, etc? I saw the Society of American Archivists dedicated an entire website page to climate change resources and disaster planning. More recently, I saw a news article out of Northern Ireland about how the National Museums NI just launched a strategic plan to address how to curate/manage their 1.4 million object collection with climate change risks. I find these conversations interesting because they miss the point that climate change is an immediate reality that isn’t often planned for in budgets or staff hires or even education/curricula for graduate students.

If you haven’t heard of her, look up Eira Tansey. I briefly met her at the Society of American Archivists Conference. I like Tansey’s work on climate change and archives and libraries like in her book A Green New Deal for Archives (free to read!). It’s about what public policy is needed from a archivist/curator/librarian perspective to help deal with the realities of more intense, frequent weather events.